Question for CXOs & Leaders: How do you measure the business impact of DevOps?

I was talking with some tech leaders recently, and one theme kept coming up over and over again-DevOps is no longer just about automation and pipelines, it’s about driving business outcomes.

Some key challenges I keep hearing from CXOs:

* How do you show ROI of DevOps investments to the board?
* How do you balance speed, security, and cost while scaling?
* What metrics actually prove DevOps success in business terms?

👉 I’d love to hear from the community - how are you addressing these challenges in your organizations?

To make this conversation more interactive, we have also created a dedicated WhatsApp group where CXOs, managers, and practitioners exchange ideas, share case studies, and discuss leadership-focused DevOps problems.

If you're interested, DM me for the invite link (this group is for knowledge sharing only, not spam).

Looking forward to your feedback here too! 🚀



https://redd.it/1mzk7nx
@r_devops

18x cost blow-up from retry storm + malformed JSON

We just ate $400 in 48 hours from a silent bug.
One request that should’ve cost $0.43 ballooned to $7.81 because a recursive JSON object turned into a 3.2MB payload and got shoved straight into the LLM as “context.”

Monitoring didn’t help — HTTP 200s everywhere, token usage looked high but plausible, cost alerts lagged by 6+ hours, and we had no payload size checks.

Fixes that actually worked:

100KB hard limit at API boundary
Per-request cost tracking with a $3 circuit breaker
Schema validation in CI to catch circular refs
Dedupe script (jq … | awk '$1 > 2')

Results: 91% fewer duplicate requests, and caught 2 more cost bombs (\~$300) before they hit the bill.

Anyone else validating payloads before they hit expensive APIs?

https://redd.it/1mzt9hz
@r_devops

Can I install a cloud like environment in a laptop?

We develop enterprise applications, in azure cloud. But basically the services we use are db, web server, some functions and the service bus. The users and the workload are ridiculous, like in the range of hundred of users, nor even thousands.

The thing is that we deploy everything to cloud, for every environments. Some applications have 5/10 environments for dev only. Multiply by 10 or so integrated applications.

All based on terraform and kubernetes
Wouldn't be possible to setup few local PCs and deploy there? With docker or openshift?

Would it make sense moneywise, including the effort to maintain that? At least for development?

https://redd.it/1mztv7f
@r_devops

I Created an Open-source Container Security Scanning Dashboard

Good afternoon r/devops

I built [Harbor Guard](https://github.com/HarborGuard/HarborGuard), an open source tool for scanning Docker images. It brings several scanners into one web interface, so you don’t have to manage them all separately.

* Runs scans with these tools:
* Trivy
* Grype
* Syft
* Dockle
* OSV Scanner
* Dive
* Shows results in a single dashboard
* Stores scan history for comparison
* Provides REST API endpoints for automation

# Features

* Vulnerabilities grouped by severity
* Scan history and comparisons over time
* Layer by layer image analysis
* Export reports in JSON or ZIP
* Real time progress tracking



Looking for feedback on what features would make this most useful in real workflows.

* GitHub: [https://github.com/HarborGuard/HarborGuard](https://github.com/HarborGuard/HarborGuard)
* Demo: [https://demo.harborguard.co](https://demo.harborguard.co)

https://redd.it/1mzwi3j
@r_devops

Why do people prefer managed/freemium platforms instead of just setting up open-source tools?

In my freelance career I always leaned toward open-source or free options because of budget limitations. I avoided freemium platforms from the start. During my early analysis I came to the conclusion that:

* Once you start with them (like Firebase, Firestore, Supabase, AWS Amplify, Netlify, Vercel, etc.), you get pulled into their ecosystem
* Switching providers/tools later becomes almost impossible.
* Billing grows exponentially once you scale, and by then it’s too late to pull out.

So I’ve always thought it’s safer to just set things up myself with open-source stacks. I have some notes I prepared years ago, after purchasing a server, it’s just simple steps I follow as a template: securing it, creating users, setting up firewall rules, installing the tools I need (load balancers, databases, Node, Java, etc.). I still use those same notes even now, with only rare updates.

My doubt is:

* Is the reason people still pick those managed/freemium platforms simply because they don’t know how to set things up themselves?
* Or is it more about convenience and speed?
* Or maybe businesses just accept the lock-in cost as part of the trade-off?
* Is there some hidden advantage I’m missing here from a DevOps perspective?

Would love to hear real experiences from people who’ve been down this path.

https://redd.it/1mzyd5g
@r_devops

Anyone else have generally good experiences with AI tools?

When it comes to AI tools like Cursor, Copilot, Gemini, etc., it seems like it's nothing but an endless litany of opinions on how much they suck and how little they help.

Which is wild, because that's the exact opposite of my experience. I've been doing DevOps / SRE work for over a decade now and Cursor has massively sped up the amount of quality code I write. Especially when it uses your local repo for context.

The agentic self-prompting feature where it goes and asks the next logical question and works on it has been a huge time saver compared to writing a prompt, getting an answer, copy-pasting it, then repeating.

Sure, it has pitfalls, and it doesn't always get things right, but 90% of the time, it's very close to what I need and only needs some slight tweaks.

I use it primarily to write Python, Typescript and HCL, and it's done pretty well with each of those.

Anyone else out there finding AI tools more useful than not?

https://redd.it/1mzupth
@r_devops

How do you keep your devops skills sharp after moving to a new department?

I'm a devops engineer ( 1.5YOE ) that got the opportunity to move to a development team and have been here for a month now, What can I do in my free time to make sure my devops skills stay sharp, I'd like to be open to both SWE and devops/cloud roles in the future

https://redd.it/1mzw53z
@r_devops

Learning DevOps

Hello, I am currently learning DevOps(self learning). I have deployed Gitea and Jenkins and right now, Jenkins pushes docker containers to my Gitea registry and they show up under packages. Is that good practice to leave it this way or do I need to have a separate server for containers?

I tried talking to ChatGPT and the outcome was with a well speced server it is acceptable. But I want to hear from people that actually do this on a daily. Your guidance will be highly appreciated.

https://redd.it/1mzuq8u
@r_devops

How do you guys approach documentation?

Struggling with keeping docs updated and actually useful. Been trying different approaches and curious what's working for others.

https://redd.it/1n044f7
@r_devops

Is DevOps a realistic career switch if you’re not a developer?

I’ve been working as a manual tester for about 4 years but feel like I’m stuck in the same role with no real growth. Everyone around me keeps talking about DevOps, CI/CD, and automation, but from the outside it looks pretty technical.Is DevOps something a tester can realistically transition into, or do you need to be a full-fledged developer first? How did you guys get started learning it?

https://redd.it/1mzsm8g
@r_devops

Training recommendations to become a DevOps Engineer?

Hi everyone,

I’m currently a full-time software developer working mainly in full-stack development. I’ve done a bit of DevOps work in the past, but nothing extensive. On the side, I run a homelab where I deploy multiple apps for personal use. I also have a solid understanding of networking and VPNs, though my knowledge of Docker networking is more limited.

For those already in the field:
• Do you think my current skill set is enough to start transitioning into a DevOps role?
• If not, what kind of training or certifications would you recommend to fill the gaps?

Thanks in advance for any advice!


https://redd.it/1n0776t
@r_devops

spin up feature branch environments?

We are a lean team of two developers and we have two environments (dev, prod). Push to dev happens a few times per day and push to prod every few days/weeks. We have a manager who pokes around the dev environment for every feature being added. Ran into issue a few times where one dev was ready to push his commits that are on dev to prod, but the other was not ready. It creates a problem where we have to cherry-pick commits from dev to prod. Now I want to look at creating feature branches and spinning up feature branch environments that are created/destroyed when branch is created/destroyed using CI/CD and terraform. Obviously want to make this setup as simple as possible.


I basically want feature branch environments that have the same settings as dev. Resources and applications for our dev environment are hosted within Microsoft Azure to include Virtual Machines (VMs), Storage Accounts, App Services, Certificates, Key Vaults, DNS records.

Am I on the right track that feature branch environments are a good way to solve the need to cherry pick? Any advice/tips/tools too for how to do it are appreciated

https://redd.it/1n07vob
@r_devops

using lambda and sqs for updating a database

Hi all , junior DevOps engineer with 2 years experience looking for some advice

We are currently addressing an issue with one of our existing process and some research has led me to this being a good use case for lambda / SQS

Right now we have a very old process which updates our database daily based on CSV files which are sent to us every evening via a bash script from our data team

We have been working with them to move away from this and the approach will involve.

1. Data team pushing a payload via a POST request to our application endpoint ( will be creating a new endpoint just for this process)

2. Will hit our AWS API gateway which we will be creating

3. The payload will be routed to a Lamba function which will handle validation of the payload and check size of the messages

4. Payload is then pushed to SQS

5. A second lambda will poll the SQS and update our
self hosted DB with the data

I will be writing the functions in Go.

these are early stage discussions and haven’t discussed the more technical considerations such but want to hear some opinions on this approach

Thanks





https://redd.it/1n06zu0
@r_devops

Wrote a blog post on troubleshooting AKS workloads using MCP

Hi Everyone,

I have been working on using MCP for troubleshooting and wrote a blog post around. Sharing it here in case it is helpful for some folks! :)

Blog: https://blog.aks.azure.com/2025/08/20/real-time-observability-in-aks-mcp-server

Repository: https://aka.ms/aks/mcp

https://redd.it/1n0579r
@r_devops

Seeking Advice

Hello, r/devops.
I'm currently early in my career which isn't actually a devops role, but my responsibilities are close enough to have gotten me interested. My interests vary, though, and my primary interest resides in Java and Android for now
I've started work on a personal learning project just to get a feeling for the whole thing. At a basic level, what I've covered includes
* Basic Apache setup
* Simple Build/Test/Deploy pipeline with Jenkins
* Monitoring with the Grafana stack and OpenTelemetry
* Automatic configuration with Ansible

I've checked out https://roadmap.sh/devops, and I see that there are still a few core things to learn like Artifact Management

Where I'm seeking advice currently is this:
I'm currently just learning everything through a simple pet project with Android and Spring Boot that doesn't feel presentable enough to be showcased properly, and so I'm contemplating a few options:
* Strengthen my frontend and actually deploy the app, even though it has no real world value
* Wrap up the app locally and simply summarise what I've learned along with a small demo and a blog post
* Learn everything I need to know, look for a real problem that might need solving, and then build a brand new project applying all the tools. My main issue with this approach is that I don't know exactly how to find a problem what would need to be solved with these basic skills

Please what approach of the 3 would you recommend and why? And any other approach or advice would be welcome, too

https://redd.it/1n04ms6
@r_devops

My company put me in devops and I don't like it

Hi, I'm just 22 and now recently joined my first company in IT. I always had a interest in programming and creating apps and websites for the last four years. My company had a training in full stack with cloud and everything so i naturally thought I'll be in the appdev team but they put me in the devops team now. I don't like this at all. The main reason is that i still don't really understand what devops is. They won't switch me to another team until a year or two. I'm still gonna do it because it's a high paying job but I'm afraid I'll lose my love for programming because of this. So maybe convince me this is not so bad and help me feel better ig.

https://redd.it/1n0ex0s
@r_devops

How do you keep up with fast-changing tech trends without burning out?

\#TechTrends #ITCommunity #ContinuousLearning

https://redd.it/1n0g6qw
@r_devops

FREE StackBuilder Workshop: From Prompt to Production-Ready Infrastructure
Live Demo of Intent-Driven Infrastructure Provisioning with Built-in Governance

Register here: https://stackgen.com/stackbuilder-workshop

https://redd.it/1n0ewdr
@r_devops

Reddit always gives the most honest feedback. Any thoughts/feedback on our new homepage

I know Reddit is probably the best place to get honest (and sometimes brutally honest 😅) feedback, so I wanted to put this out there.

I’m the marketing lead at kuberns.com, a platform we’re building for developers and DevOps teams. It makes deployment easy and yo can deploy any projects in one click with AI. also it uses AI to help optimize cloud infrastructure and one of the main things we’re focused on is helping teams save on cloud costs (we’ve been seeing \~40% savings on AWS).

We just revamped our homepage to make the value clearer, but honestly, when you're this close to the product, you stop seeing it with fresh eyes.

If you have a minute, I’d love your thoughts on:

Does the homepage explain what Kuberns is and does, clearly?
Is anything confusing, too buzzwordy, or missing?
Does it feel relevant / helpful to someone in dev or DevOps?
First impressions in general, good, bad, whatever.

Not trying to pitch or sell anything, just looking to learn from people who live and breathe this stuff every day. Even one-line feedback would mean a lot.

Thanks so much!

https://redd.it/1n0j7y9
@r_devops

Best guardrails to keep cloud costs from spiraling as we grow?

We’re a fast-growing startup and our AWS bill is starting to outpace revenue. Stack is mostly EKS, RDS, and S3, plus Glue + Athena for data jobs. Last month a few heavy queries and misconfigured jobs doubled our bill in a single shot.

For teams that scaled quickly, what guardrails actually worked? (e.g. tagging + cost allocation, quotas, auto-scaling configs, query monitoring, FinOps tooling). Any tips on balancing delivery speed and not waking up to a massive bill?

https://redd.it/1n0jz5m
@r_devops